Large enterprises often have various departments that need to store massive amounts of data, such as human resources records, financial records, word processor documents, customer usage records, and web pages. Due to sustained growth of a file system and/or the addition of new functionalities for a file system, the required storage tends to grow over time. Because of the long time period required to procure additional storage and the long lead time associated with allocating the additional storage, some large enterprises allocate large amounts of additional storage to their file systems on an infrequent basis.
However, some file systems may increase their storage usage more rapidly than anticipated, due to sustained growth or increased functionality. The manager of a file system that is using almost all of its allocated storage may have to make an emergency request for an additional storage allocation as a stop-gap. The file system manager may overstate the amount of storage needed due to the emergency conditions and the long time periods required to procure and allocate the additional storage. When responding to an emergency request, a storage allocation manager may not have the data available to determine if the requested amount of storage is a valid amount. Furthermore, the storage allocation manager and this manager's employees may spend significant amounts of time on due diligence, evaluating each emergency request. Meanwhile, other file system managers who previously overstated their needs for additional storage may not be using much of their storage. These circumstances may result in an enterprise incurring significant expenses to procure and allocate additional storage for a requesting file system while another file system is not using a significant amount of its allocated storage. Additionally, the storage allocation manager may not be able to anticipate when additional storage will be required or how much additional storage needs to be procured.